OFFSTAGE: Keith Urban Hand: From Milwaukee to Eau Claire

(CMT Offstage keeps a 24/7 watch on everything that’s happening with country music artists behind the scenes and out of the spotlight.)

Denise Mackey-Natz asked me if it was weird that Keith Urban called her. She said he seemed like he called random strangers all the time. He was that nice. I assured her that he was that nice, but that her story must have really gotten to him to get him to pick up the phone. (Remember, she is the Wisconsin salon owner who had an Urban-themed hand-shaped chair stolen from outside her salon, and Urban called her to offer a reward to the person who returned it.
) And his plan worked. Monday (May 9), Mackey-Natz got a call from a young man named Eric, who had the hand in Milwaukee, and he drove it back up to Eau Claire. How Eric got a hold of the hand is a little unclear. He was in Eau Claire, was out at the bars, found the hand, which he thought was being thrown away, so he took it. Then his friend called him to tell him he’d seen Mackey-Natz on the news, and she was upset, and so on. “I’m such a trusting person,” she told me. “It has a few scratches, but I’m just so happy to have the hand back. I want to put it right back outside.” Maybe someday she will forget this whole crazy week. As for her phone call from Urban, though, that is something she’ll remember forever. “When the girl who answers our phone said a guy was on the phone saying he was Keith Urban, I didn’t believe her,” she recalled. “And when I picked up, and he said ‘This is Keith Urban,’ I said, ‘No, it’s not.’ But he kept talking, and I realized it was him and I was thinking, ‘Do you know who you are?’” Anyway, congrats to Mackey-Natz. And way to man up, Eric.